Team sports ethics : How to achieve justice in a professional club's health care system

In this paper, I made an attempt to map the decision making structure regarding injured or at risk players within professional team sports. I assumed four main stakeholders to be involved in the process: player, coach, physician and the club or national federation as an economic and social institution. It appeared that every stakeholder has different motives that drive them while making decisions concerning injured or at risk players. Starting from the problem of ‘playing hurt’, various external factors influence the attitude of the stakeholders in specific cases. These need to be analyzed since a deeper understanding of the reasoning of the stakeholders will learn/teach us to what extent the player is capable of practicing their autonomy, presuming that this principle is important within medical ethics. Furthermore, in order to protect the player’s health, they need to get the physical and emotional risks they take covered by their employer. Finally, this paper concludes with defining a sport organization’s attitude towards health. It seems that their interest is twofold; it is a matter of instrumental reasons on the one hand – fit players means an increased chance of economic successes - and the carrying of a moral obligation on the other. The latter becomes a question of justice